The Color of Night

Race, Railroaders, and Murder in the Wartime West

On an unusually
cold January night in 1943, Martha James was murdered on a train in rural
Oregon, near the Willamette Valley town of Albany. She was white, southern, and
newly-married to a Navy pilot. Despite inconsistent and contradictory
eyewitness accounts, a young black cook by the name of Robert Folkes, a trainman
from South Central Los Angeles, was charged with the crime. The ensuing
investigation and sensational murder trial captured national attention during a
period of intense wartime fervor and extensive black domestic migration.
Folkes’s trial and controversial conviction—resulting in his execution by the
state of Oregon—reshaped how Oregonians and others in the West thought about
race, class, and privilege.

In this deeply
researched and detailed account, Geier explores the attitudes of local
town-folk, law officers, and courtroom jurors toward black trainmen on the West
Coast, at a time when militarization skewed perceptions of virtue, status, and
authority. He delves into the working conditions and experiences of unionized
black trainmen in their “home and away” lives in Los Angeles and Portland,
while illuminating the different ways that they, and other residents of Oregon
and southern California, responded to sensationalized reports of “Oregon’s
murdered war bride.” Prosecutors, police, and reporters colluded, in Wartime, to stage the trial as a moralizing ritual for a public purpose that had little to do with justice.

The
investigation, trial, and conviction of Robert Folkes galvanized civil rights
activists, labor organizers, and community leaders into challenging the flawed
judicial process and ultimately the death penalty in Oregon, serving as a
catalyst for civil rights activism that bridged rural and urban divides. The
Color of Night will appeal to “true crime” aficionados, and to anyone
interested in the history of race and labor relations, working conditions, community
priorities, and attitudes toward the death penalty in the first half of the
20th century.

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"In The Color of Night, Max Geier weaves a fascinating and intricate tale of race, class, labor, and murder in the Pacific Northwest during World War II. Geier tells a compelling story that transports readers from rural Oregon to Portland to Los Angeles during the tense and highly charged wartime atmosphere. [I]t makes a real contribution to our understanding of race and labor in the wartime Pacific Northwest. Geier's book is… more